Thursday 1 March 2012

Spiders in the toilets


















My daughter took me to the Victoria and Albert Museum last week – a treasure house and not to be missed by anyone visiting London for the first time. Where else could you have a cup of coffee or enjoy a meal for £6 in such lavish splendour?


















The toilets are something else.

I was most perturbed to see a spider directly over the hole where I was meant to piss. I waited. It didn’t move. Carefully I aimed, at the same time discreetly looking to left and right to see if my companion pissers, too, had a spider. Being short-sighted I couldn’t see without drawing attention to myself and leading to some very wrong conclusions. Meanwhile I pondered the moral question – to aim for the spider – like some kind of video game; or to carefully navigate my pee so as to miss it. Small things like this stress me out and I stood there for a time unable to do anything. My fellow pissers, more cavalier or desperate had been and gone, leaving me alone.

And I discovered they, too, had a spider.

Every piss-pot in the room had a spider. I investigated each one.

WTF as experienced bloggers say.

I get it. We men cannot be trusted to aim for a two inch diameter hole with splash-back surrounds. We need help. Aim for the spider. Or focus on missing it. Are men so incapable they can’t simply piss in a hole?

And why spiders? Are they so hateful? Why not butterflies, Blue Admirals, baby rabbits, kittens, an eye, politicians…or is spiderism acceptable and every other ‘ism’ not?

Women, for obvious reasons don’t have the same problem, so their toilet are all together different. Not for them the demoralised spider. Look and weep

And no, I didn’t take this photograph, but I would have loved to have had a good look round.

Sorry for the rant.

Part Two of the Victoria and Albert coming up next week, sans spiders and toilets

11 comments:

Maria Zannini said...

LOL! But you never told us which way you went. Did you drown your spider? If each bowl had one, they must be pretty good at hanging on. Either that, or Men's Rooms don't get used much.

Ref: Ladies Room
I could do without the graphic. Cleaver, but dizzying.

Mike Keyton said...

No, I missed it, Maria. I'm still brooding on those spiders. They weren't even Pugin spiders, William Morris Spiders, a Westwood spider. They were bog standard bits of plastic glued on, one of which looked very bedraggled, one leg pissed off completely.

Ref Ladies room, relieving yourself can be ecstatic but is more usually a tedious experience. So a bit of 'dizzy' is good...isn't it? Least bettter than wet spiders : )

Angela Brown said...

Okay, so after picking myself up from rolling on the floor chuckling my jolly round belly into a tizzy, I suppose the spiders were there as a game, maybe? I mean, you know, give you fellas a bit of entertainment while you relieve yourselves. or, it could be as your rant hints, that providing a target to kill instead of a plain hole increases the chances of more accuracy.

Mike Keyton said...

Angela, now if those little fellows were running around, that would be a game - only then, I imagine, there would be far more splashing going on @ )

Phillip Spencer said...

Bog standard spiders? Ouch!

Phillip Spencer said...

I recall seeing transfers of flies used to similar effect in a loo in Brussels. They seem a much more deserving target.

Claudia Zurc said...

LOL! Funny story, Mike. I hope I never run into a spider in the toilet. I know these arachnids are helpful to human kind as they rid of insects but, I can do without them ;) Regarding the Victoria and Albert museum, I hate to admit I didn't go while on my trip to London a few years ago :( Perhaps next time.

Jay Paoloni said...

Mike,
I could never aim at the spider in the toilet! They'd get the opposite effect they were hoping for with people like me!

Hey!
I have just given you a blog award!
Please, pass by and collect it on my blog whenever you have time. Your blog has been mentioned with four more in the "news and curiosity" section of my blog.
You can give the award to five more blogs of your choice with less than 200 followers.

Have a nice week!

Mike Keyton said...

Phillip, flies, exquisite masterpieces of engineering - and a great future a head of them when humanity implodes in carnage. Maybe we should piss on them now. But let them move so there's an element of 'big game' hunting.

Mike Keyton said...

Claudia, I hope you can make the V&A next time. You could go there many times and still want to see more.

Mike Keyton said...

Jay, thanks for the award. I haven't yet figured out how to 'collect' it because I'm a techno-dwarf, but I'll certainly pass it on